Tag: Republicans

The thing about Republicans and health care reform is that Republicans SUUUUUUCK!

Yes, I said it, and if you disagree, then you suuuuuuck too!

Tell me, how many years have GOP politicians in the House and Senate had to write a bill that most everyone in their party could embrace since Obamacare came into being?

Anyone? Anyone?

Could the answer be about 3 years shy of a decade?

Hmmm… so, let me see if I understand this correctly. The Republican party elite in Washington, DC couldn’t manage to cobble together a patient-centered, free-market-based, solution to the nightmare we call Obamacare in SEVEN FUCKING YEARS!

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GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump has promised “several top Republicans” he will not run a third-party campaign, The Huffington Post reports.

The website said it spoke to “several sources,” who confirmed the news.

Top Trump aide Michael Cohen, however, would not confirm that his boss has completely ruled out an independent run if he doesn’t win the Republican nomination. Cohen did tell HuffPost, though, that Trump never had “any intent” of running under any other banner than the GOP.

“He just wanted to ensure that the establishment would treat him as fair as they would treat any of the other candidates,” Cohen told HuffPost. “And I believe right now they are treating him fairly. It is my personal belief that the RNC is treating Mr. Trump the same as the other candidates and he will live up to his agreement not to run as an independent.”

Trump himself, even while threatening a third-party run, essentially said the threat was intended to ensure the party would treat him as an equal to the other candidates — something he felt wasn’t happening early in his campaign.

Now, Trump appears to acknowledge that the threat actually could hurt his chances with loyal Republican voters, HuffPost noted.

Trump said he was open to the pledge a few days after the first GOP debate on Aug. 6, where he was the only candidate among the top 10 to raise his hand and say he wouldn’t promise to support the eventual party nominee and run as an independent.

Radio host Hugh Hewitt recently advised Trump against a third-party effort, because it would ensure a win for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump agreed it was a good argument.

But HuffPost noted that one of its Republican sources cautioned that any decision by Trump is subject to change “since he is known for his political impulsiveness. A stray insult from a fellow Republican could, theoretically, change his calculus.”

“[Fox News Chief Roger] Ailes thought he had a deal too. Then Trump called Megyn Kelly a bimbo, again,” one Republican operative said.

“Only Mr. Trump can sign that oath,” Cohen said when asked if Trump would make his announcement public. “And when he does, you can rest assured he will live by it.”

Today, the international community led by the United States has agreed to not only legitimize and perpetuate the Iranian nuclear program, but also to further arm and enrich the brutal theocratic regime that has oppressed the Iranian people for more than thirty years – a regime that is wrongfully holding United States citizens captive, that is sponsoring radical Islamic terrorism across the globe, and that regularly promotes the destruction of both Israel and America throughout its streets.

Despite these facts, it seems President Obama would concede almost anything to get any deal – even a terrible deal – from the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Under the terms of this deal, Iran will retain all of its centrifuges, one-third of which will continue to spin. Rather than the most intrusive inspections regime in history that we were promised, IAEA inspectors must petition the mullahs to visit sensitive sites, and wait for two weeks for their permission. In a final, shocking concession, the United States will support lifting of the United Nations arms embargos that restrict the Iranian ballistic missile program and arms trafficking. And in return, billions of dollars of economic relief will flow to Tehran.

Yet, in his remarks this morning, the President glossed over the truth about Iran’s world-leading state-sponsorship of terrorism that is violently destabilizing the region, and would grow more deadly should the Iranians get a nuclear bomb. He failed to mention American citizens, Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati and Jason Rezaian, who continue to languish in Iranian prisons or Robert Levinson, who is still unaccounted for. For them, today is no ‘opportunity to move in a new direction’ as the President claimed. We owe it to our fellow Americans to elevate, not ignore, their plight, to demand their swift and unconditional release by the implacably hostile regime that holds them.

Even by the low standards of the Joint Plan of Action, this is a staggeringly bad deal. It is a fundamental betrayal of the security of the United States and of our closest allies, first and foremost Israel.

But thankfully, it is not a done deal. We still have an opportunity to tell the truth about what Prime Minister Netanyahu called today a ‘bad mistake of historic proportion.

Congress will have 60 days to review it, and the American people will have 60 days to tell their elected representatives just what they think of it. I urge all my fellow citizens to speak out and let their elected leaders know that even if President Obama won’t see it, we know the leaders of the Islamic Republic who lead crowds in chants of ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’ are not our partners in peace, and must not be put on the path to a nuclear bomb.

Here’s what some other Republican presidential candidates had to say about the deal.

Ben Carson:

The Iran deal announced today with fanfare and another heaping dose of false hope is almost certain to prove an historic mistake with potentially deadly consequences.

A careful review of the 100-plus pages is in order to fully understand the lengths to which the negotiators were willing to stoop to secure a deal at any cost with the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and a regime dedicated in word and deed to bringing death to America.

Without anywhere anytime surprise inspections, a full accounting of Iran’s past secret nuclear arms pursuits, elimination of Iran’s uranium stockpiles and the lifting of any sanctions only upon verification of Iranian compliance, this is not a good deal, but a recipe for disaster and the first fateful step toward a frenzied nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

Scott Walker:

President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran will be remembered as one of America’s worst diplomatic failures. The deal allows Tehran to dismantle U.S. and international sanctions without dismantling its illicit nuclear infrastructure – giving Iran’s nuclear weapons capability an American stamp of approval. In crafting this agreement, President Obama has abandoned the bipartisan principles that have guided our nonproliferation policy and kept the world safe from nuclear danger for decades. Instead of making the world safer, this deal will likely lead to a nuclear arms race in the world’s most dangerous region. What’s worse, the deal rewards the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism with a massive financial windfall, which Iran will use to further threaten our interests and key allies, especially Israel.

I call on all congressional leaders and presidential candidates, including Secretary Clinton, to repudiate this agreement. Iran’s Supreme Leader should know that a future American president will not be bound by this diplomatic retreat. Undoing the damage caused by this deal won’t be easy. But when the United States leads, and has a president who isn’t eager to embrace Iran, the world will follow. In order to ensure the safety of America and our allies, the next president must restore bipartisan and international opposition to Iran’s nuclear program while standing with our allies to roll back Iran’s destructive influence across the Middle East.

Marco Rubio:

Based on what we know thus far, I believe that this deal undermines our national security. President Obama has consistently negotiated from a position of weakness, giving concession after concession to a regime that has American blood on its hands, holds Americans hostage, and has consistently violated every agreement it ever signed.

I expect that a significant majority in Congress will share my skepticism of this agreement and vote it down. Failure by the President to obtain congressional support will tell the Iranians and the world that this is Barack Obama’s deal, not an agreement with lasting support from the United States. It will then be left to the next President to return us to a position of American strength and re-impose sanctions on this despicable regime until it is truly willing to abandon its nuclear ambitions and is no longer a threat to international security.

Mike Huckabee:

Shame on the Obama administration for agreeing to a deal that empowers an evil Iranian regime to carry out its threat to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ and bring ‘death to America.’

John Kerry should have long ago gotten up on his crutches, walked out of the sham talks, and went straight to Jerusalem to stand next to Benjamin Netanyahu and declared that America will stand with Israel and the other sane governments of the Middle East instead of with the terrorist government of Iran.

By any reasonable assessment, the United States is losing its 36-year war with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The surrender to Iran on sanctions and nuclear weapons will be one more stage in the American defeat by a determined, dishonest and surprisingly effective theocratic dictatorship in Tehran.

Historians will look back on the Iranian campaign against the United States and conclude that there have been few examples of a weaker power so decisively outmaneuvering, bluffing, deceiving and weakening its vastly more powerful opponent.

Sun Tzu would be proud of the strategic skills exhibited by the Iranians and their ability to lie and feign reasonableness while calmly and steadily implementing a strategy of relentless aggression.

Now, through these strategies, the Iranians are on the verge of a triple victory over the United States: an agreement that will legitimize Iran as the dominant regional power, substantially expand the amount of money it has to support terrorism and other military efforts, and smooth the path to its becoming a nuclear power.

This will be the greatest victory yet for the Iranian dictatorship in its war against America.

That war began 36 years ago, in 1979, virtually the moment Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from Paris to create a religious dictatorship. Mark Bowden captures the reality of this war in his book “Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam.”

Beginning in November 1979, the Iranians occupied the American embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The regime could take two clear lessons from this illegal attack.

First, the seizure allowed the Iranians to assert their moral superiority, characterizing the crime as a “conquest of the American spy den.” It was a great political and emotional victory for the radical regime and strengthened its control of Iran.

Second, the dictatorship could treat President Carter with absolute contempt. It was unmoved by offers of financial aid and by military threats. The failure of an American military rescue effort in April 1980 just deepened Iranian hostility.

The day after the embassy was seized, Khomeini called the United States the “Great Satan.” This was not a casual remark. It expressed the depth of sincere revulsion the Iranian leadership felt – and continues to feel – for America.

As recently as last week, demonstrators burned American flags in Tehran (something that could only have occurred with the dictatorship’s approval).

Whatever good personal relations Secretary of State John Kerry thinks he is developing with the Iranian foreign minister in Geneva, there is unrelenting anti-American hostility from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As recently as June 4, he tweeted that “The term ‘Great Satan’ for US was coined by @IRKhomeini; when you consider… an entity as Satan then it’s clear how you should behave.”

Here is the supreme leader of the Iranian dictatorship reminding his followers that any deal in Geneva is a deal with “the Great Satan.”

The fact that this is an English language statement available for anyone (even the White House and the State Department) to read is a sign of the continuing contempt the Iranian dictatorship has for the United States.

The last 36 years of experience validates the Iranian approach.

For more than three decades the regime has funded, supplied and trained terrorists all over the world, and we have done next to nothing.

Iran has waged a proxy war against Americans using Hezbollah – including blowing up the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 63, and later bombing a Marine barracks there, killing 220 Marines, 21 other U.S. personnel, and 58 French troops – and nothing happened. They captured the CIA station chief, tortured him for months, released a video of him after the torture and killed him. Nothing happened.

Iran has consistently supplied both Hezbollah and Hamas in their fight against Israel.

Iran has sheltered al Qaeda members from Americans who were hunting them.

Iran has provided bombs and other weapons used to kill Americans in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iran has supported Bashar Assad in Syria and now supports the Houthis in Yemen.

For all of this, there has been no significant cost to the regime. Indeed, America’s influence had declined and Iran’s power has increased.

During a long stretch of economic sanctions imposed by the West, three things have become clear:

• The dictatorship values terrorism and military action more than economic growth, and the sanctions have had little or no impact on Iranian power projection.

• The dictatorship shields its military, police and political elites from the sanctions, and they are feeling little pain.

• The dictatorship has continued building centrifuges and is more nuclear-capable today than when the sanctions began. (The great irony of the talk-talk strategy is that the regime has gone from possessing a handful of centrifuges to thousands of them while its opponents pretend its progress is frozen.)

An American surrender to Iran in the nuclear talks will have four immediate and devastating consequences.

First, as much as $150 billion in money impounded by the sanctions will be released. The regime’s history teaches us that a substantial portion of this will go to fund terrorism and military action around the world. By focusing on the nuclear program and ignoring the program of terrorism and aggression, the Obama administration is on the verge of vastly increasing the resources Iran has to use against the United States and its allies.

Second, once the sanctions are gone, the Iranians will sign very profitable contracts with German, Russian and Chinese firms. The pressure against reinstating the sanctions will be overwhelming (and two of the three countries have vetoes in the U.N. Security Council).

Third, the Iranian nuclear program will be “approved” by the international community and will accelerate. If North Korea is any example, once these negotiations conclude, the Iranians will go full-speed ahead. Inspectors will be delayed, obstructed, lied to and will pathetically whine about Iranian noncompliance. It is clear this agreement guarantees an eventual Iranian bomb. And “eventual” may be a lot sooner than we think.

Fourth, signing an agreement as a co-equal with the United States, Russia, China and the Europeans will drastically increase the prestige of the Iranian dictatorship. That enhanced prestige will be translated into an already-aggressive regime bullying its neighbors even more.

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FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg came under fire Tuesday at a House subcommittee hearing over allegations that Operation Choke Point, a controversial federal law enforcement program, abused its authority by cutting off funding for targeted businesses.

During one exchange, Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wisc., suggested Gruenberg step down as head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation after Gruenberg was unable to answer questions about employees involved with Choke Point as well as specific allegations the agency overstepped its authority.

Duffy said the hearing was called to get answers directly from Gruenberg on what he knew, when he knew it and who has been held accountable.

“You are abusing your power and going after small businesses all over America,” Duffy said. He later added, “Bottom line, you are putting people out of business. They haven’t been fired, they haven’t been reprimanded.”

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Under Operation Choke Point, banks and other financial institutions were reportedly pressured to cut off accounts for targeted businesses that included gun stores, casinos, tobacco distributors, short-term lenders and other businesses.

Critics claim the program – overseen by the Justice Department, FDIC and other agencies – was used to squeeze legal companies that some politicians considered morally objectionable.

“Our concern is you have agencies in the Obama administration that are using government as a weapon and they going after industries and people that they don’t like,” Duffy, who co-chairs the Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said. “This is not the old Soviet Union or Venezuela or Cuba. I think it’s important for all Americans to stand up and push back on policies that are an abuse of government.”

Several members of Congress have openly called Operation Choke Point a blatant abuse of power, and an example of government bureaucrats appointing themselves morality police so they could operate around the law.

In response to the controversy, the FDIC put out a statement that said in part: “It is the FDIC’s policy that insured institutions that properly manage customer relationships are neither prohibited nor discouraged from providing services to any customer operating in compliance with applicable law… the FDIC has a responsibility to cooperate with other government agencies and to ensure that the banks we supervise are adhering to laws, including those governing anti-money laundering and terrorist financing.”

Initially, the FDIC put out a list of 30 high-risk businesses, but that list has since been rescinded.

The U.S. Consumer Coalition claimed taking down that list only removed a guideline, and without a specific list of businesses, the subjectivity of who gets targeted was increased.

Brian Wise, with the U.S. Consumer Coalition, points out the irony. “By shutting down the bank accounts of these legally operating businesses, what they’re actually doing is forcing these businesses to deal solely in cash, which is completely opposite of what they have said their intention is,” he said. “It’s a whole lot easier to launder money with cash than having to go through a financial institution.”

Wise said questioning the chairman of the FDIC is a good start, but the problem doesn’t end there. “We know that it doesn’t just stop with the FDIC. This is a program that includes the CFPB, FDIC, Department of Justice and may lead all the way up to the president,” he said.

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Well, the movement to oust Boehner fell one vote shy of its mark today, as crybaby John was chosen Speaker of the House again. These are the cowardly, self-serving assclowns in the GOP who have betrayed their consitutents and turned their backs on the principles upon which their party was built.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday that President Barack Obama will block a government budget bill if the GOP denies him the funds needed to provide amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.

“Yes,” Earnest said when asked by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl if Obama would veto a government-wide budget that defunded the amnesty program.

If Obama blocks the budget to help the illegals, large sections of the federal government would shut down on Dec. 12.

Gov. Mike Pence signed legislation today requiring the state to come up with its own academic standards, making Indiana the latest state to pull its support for the national education standards known as Common Core.

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“I believe our students are best served when decisions about education are made at the state and local level,” the Republican governor said, adding:

“By signing this legislation, Indiana has taken an important step forward in developing academic standards that are written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers, and are uncommonly high.”

Heritage Foundation education analyst Brittany Corona praised Pence for ending the “one-size-fits-all national standards,” and setting a precedent for the other 45 states currently under Common Core to follow. Corona said:

“Indiana now has an opportunity to improve on its previous state standards – which were among the best in the nation – by utilizing those standards in conjunction with standards from other high-performing states such as Massachusetts. Most importantly, Indiana’s actions put educational decision-making back in the hands of Hoosiers, where it belongs.”

At least 15 other states aren’t using, or have grown increasingly wary of, Common Core. The map below shows the current status of states that never adopted the standards, downgraded their involvement, or paused implementation.

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House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled their new “Investigation of Benghazi” website which appears to be a Benghazi file repository of committee reports and other declassified publications related to the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty and Diplomat Sean Smith.

In a couple of brief paragraphs the website explains that the mission of the House Republicans is to discover what occurred on that night in Benghazi and to uncover exactly what the Obama administration is attempting to cover up:

Shortly after the attack, House Republicans asked the Obama administration to explain to the American people the Administration’s actions leading up to and during the attack itself, as well as the fact that publicly-available information consistently contradicted Administration accounts describing the cause and nature of the attack. Our fight for answers and justice continues today.

For over a year now, House Committees have engaged in serious, deliberate, and exhaustive oversight investigations of what led up to this tragic event, what happened that night, and why the White House still refuses to tell the whole truth. All of the unclassified information and findings from this ongoing investigation can be found on this website.

This page continues to be updated as more information becomes available. The most recent update was made on January 29, 2014.

One of the most interesting sections of the new repository is titled House Committee on Foreign Affairs and includes the following files:

Insurgent conservatives seeking to pull the Republican Party to the right raised more money last year than the groups controlled by the party establishment, whose bulging bank accounts and ties to major donors have been their most potent advantage in the running struggle over the party’s future, according to new campaign disclosures and interviews with officials.

You would never know it from the New York Times’ vapid and long-winded article, but according to FEC filings on Friday Tea Party groups and conservative SuperPACs raised about three times more money than the Republican establishment SuperPACs did in 2013.

The shift in fortunes among the largest and most influential outside political groups, revealed in campaign filings made public late Friday, could have an enormous impact on the 2014 election cycle…

Yes, for one thing it might have motivated the sudden change in tone from the Republican leadership about ramming through amnesty this year.

Groups representing the party establishment, like Karl Rove’s Crossroads, are struggling to bring in the level of cash they raised in 2012, when Crossroads spent more than $300 million in a failed effort to defeat President Obama and retake the Senate, leaving donors grumbling that their dollars had been wasted.

Meanwhile, insurgent conservative groups like the Tea Party Patriots – emldened by activists’ fury over compromises that Republican leaders have struck with Democrats on federal spending – now have formidable amounts of cash to augment their grass-roots muscle…

The Times goes on to numb us into submission for another 19 paragraphs, many of which are devoted to bashing the Koch Brothers.

On Friday, every political campaign had to file its 2013 year end report with the FEC. The reports delivered two big surprises. The Democrats are dominating the Republicans in fundraising. More surprising, perhaps, though, is that Tea Party and conservative SuperPACs raised around three times as much as GOP establishment SuperPACs. The DC GOP may have started the war against the Tea Party, but it won’t finish it…

Whatever strategy the DC GOP is employing… clearly backfiring. All the official Democrat campaign committees collectively raised around $200 million in 2013. The Republican committees raised just over $170 million. This disparity comes when the GOP hold on the House is solid and the party stands a very real chance of taking control of the Senate. It ought to be swimming in donations. The long-standing GOP advantage on fundraising has evaporated.

Except.

The most interesting data from Friday’s reports is the surging financial strength of conservative SuperPACs. Karl Rove’s three SuperPACs collectively raised $6.1 million last year. The Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, where I am Political Director, alone raised $6.4 million. The four largest conservative SuperPACs raised $20 million. GOP establishment SuperPACs raised just over $7 million.

Donors haven’t stopped giving. They have just stopped giving the Republican party…

This is what happens when you try to bypass your base. Just as with elections, political positions have consequences.

Like this:

I may offend some people by the words in this post, but, oh well, it is not like I have not stepped on toes before. So, if you are overly sensitive, or expect that certain words can never be uttered or written you can start whining now. I am well past fed up with the Left and the aim to destroy dissent, free speech, and this nation, and I will not surrender the language to them.

The NAACP isn’t apologizing to Tim Scott for calling him a puppet. In a statement, it argued that the label reflected that Scott, one of the Senate’s two black members, hasn’t honored the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. because he’s been “echoing the position of the far right.”

“Dr. King emphasized love and justice rather than extremism. Unless we stand for justice we cannot claim allegiance to or pay homage to Dr. King,” the NAACP said in a statement to Fox News. “In a state such as South Carolina, politicians, whether they be black or white, should not be echoing the position of the far right.”

See, they are calling Senator Scott an Uncle Tom because, TOLERANCE! Apparently anyone seeking to honor Dr. King now must get the expressed approval of the ideological slave masters of the NAACP. Which brings me to a new slogan I think fits the NAACP, and most other Left Wing groups to a tee! It might sound offensive, but anyone who thinks will understand that I am condemning the NAACP and their Ideological War on Black Conservatives. So here it is, a slogan that truly fits the NAACP and it’s attitude towards Blacks Americans that think for themselves. Nigger, Know Your Place!

Two Republican legislators propose eliminating the license required to carry a concealed handgun in Ohio, a change one describes as an effort to put Second Amendment rights on the same footing as others in the Bill of Rights.

The bill, introduced Wednesday by Reps. Ron Hood of Ashville and Matt Lynch of Bainbridge Township in Geauga County, would allow any person who is at least 21 years old to carry a concealed firearm, so long as they are not legally prohibited for some reason from having guns.

Lynch said the bill is an effort to treat the right to bear arms in the Second Amendment with the same freedom as other rights.“The right in the Second Amendment is the only one in the Bill of Rights that you have to get permission for,” Lynch said.

“You don’t have to have a speech license or a worship license or a freedom of the press license,” he said. “This is designed to put the Second Amendment on equal footing.”

The law would not end restrictions on taking firearms into certain restricted areas, but would end concealed carry licensing restrictions. Constitutional carry is becoming a more popular cause in the past year, as many Americans rebel against the thought of more citizen control laws. The common sentiment seems to be that not only are proposed citizen control laws counterproductive, but the current laws are too restrictive and should be rolled back.

This reality seems to be shocking to citizen control cultists, who can’t seem to grasp the basic concept that citizens want more liberty, not less.

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The deal passed the House 332-94, with 62 Republicans and 32 Democrats voting against it. The bill is expected to come up for votes in the Senate early next week, either Monday or Tuesday.

The type of filibuster Sessions spoke of is not the traditional “talking filibuster” like the one Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) launched earlier this year to protest Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama’s drone policies. It is a procedural filibuster, The Hill reports, that would require Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to at least twice obtain 60 votes to pass the bill.

“They’ll need 60 votes on cloture and 60 votes on the budget point of order,” Sessions said, according to The Hill.

Since there are only 55 Democrats in the U.S. Senate, Reid will twice need at least five Republicans to break from their party and support the budget deal. Reid may need more Republicans if liberals like Sens. Tom Harkin (D-IA) or Bernie Sanders (I-VT) oppose the deal because it does not extend unemployment benefits. Considering 32 Democrats voted against the deal in the House, it seems plausible Reid may lose at least one, maybe two Democrats in the Senate.

Senate Republicans largely seem unified against the bill. As of late Thursday, not one Senate Republican confirmed suppot of the plan.

Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), and Roger Wicker (R-MS), who usually support similar measures, have each announced their opposition.

Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) is undecided as of this point, and while Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) – easily the Senate’s most liberal Republican – has said he is leaning “yes,” he has not yet committed to voting for the deal, citing concerns with military pension cuts in it.

Appropriators like Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) have not committed either, according to Roll Call.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Majority Whip in the Senate, confirmed to reporters on Thursday that the Democrats need GOP votes to make this happen.

“We need Republican votes to pass the budget agreement, period,” Durbin said. “We need at least five, and I’m hoping that there’ll be more than that. There are not five who Republicans have announced they’re for it, I mean to my knowledge, and I hope there are many more than that, and they’re just holding back for any number of reasons.”

While the deal is more likely to pass the Senate than not, the question becomes about which Republicans – if any – Reid will be able to attract to support the Ryan budget deal.

Bernard Goldberg joined Bill O’Reilly Monday night to address what he believes is a “potentially fatal split” in the Republican party’s immediate future. He said that if the tea party keeps rejecting anyone who isn’t basically Ted Cruz for the 2016 presidential nomination, the party’s going to be in some big trouble and invite in a strong Democratic victory.

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O’Reilly framed the fight as a “classic moderate Republican versus hard-right Republican” feud, and Goldberg rejected the “ideological rigidity” of people who will sit on their hands and refuse to vote for a Republican presidential nominee if they aren’t sufficiently conservative enough. And this is what led Goldberg to accuse these tea partiers of being the real RINOs in the GOP.

“As far as the tea partiers are concerned, anybody to the left of Ted Cruz is a RINO… but you know what? The real RINOs are the real people in the tea party and on the hard right, because they have made it clear over and over again that their allegiance is not to the Republican party, but to their particular brand of conservatism, so they’re the RINOs.”

O’Reilly suggested Cruz, if he ran, could rally the nation behind him if Obamacare continues to be a disaster, but Goldberg said anything short of “horrendously bad” will not be enough to help them. He also warned that if someone like Cruz gets the nomination, “every registered Democrat will vote, and that’s a recipe for a Democratic victory?”